Real-life Tales of Earning - Hillingdon Community Mediation

Valuing yourself

'Value yourself and you'll be valued.'

Balanced on the edge of his chair, perched in an office hanging precariously above a west London railway, Alan Sharland illuminates the philosophy that coarses through and strengthens the community mediation service of which he is the founding Director.

Alan Sharland talks about:

• Valuing your services
• Building on core purpose
• Being realistic on cost
• Auditing social value
• Going for incremental growth
• Exploiting environmental awareness

'We're not rescuers. So our clients aren't the rescued.'

Community mediation is a way of resolving disputes between neighbours where communication has broken down. Mediation is free, voluntary and impartial, independent and confidential.

'We're a mediation service. It's not about giving advice and information. It's about empowerment - people valuing themselves. That's the core of mediation work. That's the core of how we make money.'

If it sounds simple it is. Glib, no. Simple, yes.

Hillingdon Community Mediation opened for business in April 2000. In the first year of operation the business handled 35 cases - 98% of customers found the service very helpful and 90% say they would use it again. Income is generated from a local authority contract, bespoke consultancy, payments from independent housing associations and 'one off' case payments from other organisations.

This is the story of how.

The company today

Hillingdon Community Mediation's income generator is their core service. No hidden asset, no whiz-bang, bolt-on business schemes. Just doing what they do best, built upon an approach, a mindset, steadfastly refusing to provide their services for less than they are worth. Auditing, packaging, trading, sustaining, social value-added.

Hillingdon Borough Council purchase community mediation for their own council tenants.

  HCM also trades its Director's expertise on a consultancy basis and its organisational services to independent Housing Associations. The Housing Associations have a choice - they can spot-purchase mediation as and when they require it. Or they can become a subscriber, acquiring access on an open basis.

'We developed the subscriber option for two reasons. One it's a more stable income stream. Two, mediation isn't a quick fix: we want, in fact we need, our customers to buy-into not just buy: they need to understand and commit to the principles of mediation if it's going to stand any chance of working.' Again, money and mission converge.

Origins

In 1994, a voluntary steering group tried but was unsuccessful in developing a community-based mediation service. Four years later, in the spring of '99, Hillingdon Borough Council set up a scoping and consultation party to resurrect the possibility of such a service. Alan Sharland, a former teacher and mediation practitioner was employed to undertake this work.

From the outset, Alan was adamant that the service had to be independent of the council. And that fully realistic budgeting had to be in place. 'We made this happen, and on a realistic budget', he explains, 'because we were politically savvy and streetwise - and because we were articulate in valuing what this service would bring to the community - and what it would cost. We were never going to be a cheap, non-sustainable option.'

'You can't honestly build and sustain a service all about equipping people with the means to take control, if you aren't going to look hard at your own organisation providing that service and ask how you value and equip yourself. The ideas that fuel our mission are the ideas that sustain our finances.'

£12,00 start-up funding was made available 6 months later - a figure which included a significant training budget for yet-to-be-recruited mediators. In April 2000, Hillingdon Community Mediation became a reality.

Expanding Horizons

The next task is to migrate the business from council-tenants to all residents - and from specific housing-related to general mediation services.

Alan estimates (or rather, his thorough budgetary analysis tells him) that the cost of additional roll-out would be between £13 and £15 thousand. 'This will mean an enormous increase in cost effectiveness for the council as they will then be providing access to the service for all residents in the borough rather than just 15% of them for an increase in cost of just 20%.'

One housing officer told us that our involvement in one case had resolved a 7-year dispute imagine the cost-saving there - we'd have saved the public purse thousands. And we can do it again in fresh fields.'

So while  HCM continue their constructive dialogue with the council, Alan and his team have their eye on other routes to growth, diversifying their customer base.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tyre

reads the poster on the wall.

'Nothing too dramatic. We're ambitious but incremental and organic. We don't want to over-trade. Remember, this is all based, our mediation and our money, on knowing what we can and cannot achieve. If we can't deliver we ain't going to start. But sustainable horizons are opening up already.'

'Our mission is our marketing.'

We do an enormous amount of marketing via mail outs of leaflets to community groups, articles in local press, giving talks, community notice boards, leaflets in libraries, doctors surgeries and so on. And we're strong on our non-financial audit - we can prove what we do. At the end of the day the main credible route of advertising is via word of mouth.

So too are  HCM canny in exploring new avenues.

In a changing political environment, if opportunities are exploited, mediation will emerge as a growth area. Anti-social Behaviour Guidelines outlined in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act expect mediation to have been offered before an order is served. 'Well, this is our mission. So we need to be environmentally aware and make it our lever, our marketing tool too.

The same brand of calculated opportunism is evident elsewhere. When statements of Special Educational Need are tested at tribunal, availability of pre-tribunal disagreement resolution is mandatory. Two of their mediators have recently been appointed to provide this kind of mediation via an organisation that has secured the contract to do so for Local Education Authorities in a large region around London. The experience they gain will enable them to put in a credible bid to provide mediation for Hillingdon's Education department when it has to provide pre-tribunal disagreement resolution from March 2003. So skills developed working for  HCM  has enabled mediators to secure paid work which in turn can feed back into  HCM  - a virtuous circle.

Finally, as volunteer mediators gain experience,  HCM  will explore workplace mediation as a new growth area, trading services to the local private sector.

Parting Shots

Sharland's insights are hardly gene-splicing theory.  HCM    simply trade core purpose. But they do it in a way that is financially astute, politically savvy and environmentally aware.

'For sure, we're new and we'll make mistakes. I'm not saying 'follow us'. And I'm not saying that many, many others don't do the same as us - or that everything can be traded.

But I am saying 'Value yourself. Be realistic. Don't give it away.' Too many organisations are entrenched in their own under-valuation.

We were never going to get mired into that way of thinking.

Those of us who work here have worked in too many places that under-cost, fail to charge, then build a business plan on subsidy alone. I think it's a philosophical, even a political barrier - a conditioning to distrust talk of charging. Sometimes we've got to say no- and feel ok about that. Let's lose the 'rescuer' mentality, endemic in the voluntary sector, which ultimately serves no-one.'

Contact

Alan Sharland: Director
Tel. 01895 447700
email: alan@hcmediation.co.uk.

Hillingdon Community Mediation
Key House
106, High Street
Yiewsley
West Drayton
Middlesex
UB7 7BQ
 
Website: www.hcmediation.co.uk.